Dar es Salaam, 06 February, 2024 / 8:50 pm (ACI Africa).
Ahead of the 2024 World Day for the Sick, Catholic Bishops in Tanzania are appealing to the people of God in the East African nation to voluntarily donate blood as a way of demonstrating their love for the life of others.
In a video message ahead of the annual February 11 celebration, Tanzania Episcopal Conference (TEC) President, Archbishop Gervais Mwasikwabhila Nyaisonga, says that the annual event is to be marked under the theme, “Show Love to Patients, Donate Blood, Save Lives”.
Pope St. John Paul II established the World Day of the Sick in 1992 to encourage Christians to pray for the sick on February 11, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. In 2024, the annual celebration is to be realized under the theme, “It is not good that man should be alone – Healing the Sick by Healing Relationships.”
Last October, Tanzania’s Acting Secretary General of the Ministry of Health, Ziada Selaleo, said that the country was facing a shortage of safe blood for transfusion.
“I urge you all to take the important step of donating blood so that we can help in the treatment of those who need blood transfusions as part of their treatment,” Archbishop Nyaisonga says in the video recording published Monday, February 6.